President Donald J. Trump at the Port of Corpus Christi, Texas (2026) | Official White House Photo by Molly Riley / Shutterstock Editorial License
President Trump’s latest effort to impose tariffs on 60 trading partners (collectively accounting for 99.4 percent of US imports) is the use of Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to tax them for failing “to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.” Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 may be the most legally plausible and precise of the multiple efforts by the administration to impose tariffs on our trading partners. It was originally designed to respond to unfair commercial practices by specific sectors and countries. It was not intended to address risks to national security, to help industries suffering from imports, or to protect against dumping by foreign firms or unfair tariffs by foreign countries. Section 301 authorizes the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to study and determine the extent (if any) of the unfair commercial practice. Where the USTR initiates an investigation on its own authority, rather than in response to a private petition, it is required to consult with the country under investigation and seek to negotiate a resolution of the issue before taking any action. The administration initiated 60 such investigations in March 2026 and engaged in discussions with 45 of these countries.
Despite its greater chance of passing legal muster, the administration’s move is a cynical effort to replace its broad set of tariffs that have twice been rejected by US courts. Section 301 has never been used through dozens of parallel investigations for across-the-board action. Neither has it ever been used to address the global problem of forced labor. In our view, it will not be effective in reducing the use of forced labor in global supply chains, and it is unlikely to produce a US “reindustrialization,” which was stated as a goal in the administration’s announcement of the policy. President Trump seeks to refill the US tariff revenue coffers that were ordered to be emptied out when the courts ruled that its first two rounds of tariffs were illegal. The April 2025 “liberation day” reciprocal tariffs were imposed under Executive Order, and invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The Supreme Court held this Order unlawful, ruling that the President exceeded his powers as defined under this Act. In February 2026, the administration imposed a new set of tariffs across a swath of countries based on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 that allows for tariffs up to 15 percent for up to 150 days to respond to a “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.” The US Court of International Trade ruled this to be unlawful, but allowed the tariffs to remain while an appeal of the decision was being heard. When these tariffs timed out, the administration sought a third mechanism, and turned to Section 301.
The 301 play is cynical. For one, US law that prohibits trade of goods whose production involves forced labor already exists, and the administration has very rarely appealed to these laws in its approach to international trade. The prohibition on imports of goods whose production uses forced labor was explicit in the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, according to which, “all goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in any foreign country by convict labor or/and forced labor or/and indentured labor under penal sanctions shall not be entitled to entry at any of the ports of the United States.” The forced labor issue was raised more recently with respect to the case of China. Initially, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) made use of Withhold Release Orders (WROs) against particular products and entities associated with the Xinjiang region of China, with a particular focus on cotton imports. Congress then enacted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, signed by President Biden in 2022, which created a rebuttable presumption that goods produced wholly or partly in Xinjiang were made with forced labor.
The final determination by the administration from the countries investigated is difficult to reconcile with the usual remedial logic of Section 301. It imposes a 10 percent tariff on trading partners that have “made commitments to adopt, and effectively enforce” bans on forced labor imports. Typically under Section 301, such commitments would be sufficient to preclude any US tariff or penalty. Countries that were found to have made no such commitments were imposed a 12.5 percent tariff. Countries doing the right thing, in the eye of the Trump administration, therefore only received a marginally reduced penalty. This weakens the claim that the principle purpose of these duties was to induce policy reform. One can only conclude that this policy is simply the President’s revenue-raising tariff effort in new clothing.
Additionally, the right to be free from forced labor is considered a core labor right in the International Labour Organization (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. The Trump administration has rarely made a mention of human rights or labor standards in its foreign diplomacy, nor have they been guiding principles in policymaking. To the contrary, the President has cozied up to authoritarian leaders who have denied human rights and basic labor standards to significant portions of their people (e.g., Erdoğan, Modi, Putin, Kim Jong-un, and various leaders in Arab States, the region with the highest estimated forced-labor prevalence rate). Even in the domestic realm, ICE activity related to immigrant detention and deportation has been accused of being abusive of human rights.
Moreover, through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration dismantled the US Department of Labor’s capacity to monitor forced labor, which had been a respected source of research and data. The administration has proposed to eliminate all US support for the ILO, which is the custodian UN agency with the mandate of eliminating forced labor. This has reduced the organization’s ability to address and combat forced labor globally. Trump characterized the organization as a group that “works to unionize foreign workers and punish U.S. corporate interests abroad.”
Root causes of forced labor
People often have the impression that forced labor is defined by the nonpayment of wages. They imagine migrant workers in the fields of Uzbekistan, picking cotton for no pay, and forced to work under distress. But forced labor is much more nuanced than that, and a wider range of conditions meet the formal definition. Forced labor is defined as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily” (ILO Convention No. 29, 1930). The legal definition includes three specific elements: 1) all work or service, which applies to any type of employment or activity, including illegal or informal work; 2) menace of any penalty, which includes a coercive behavior by employers, states, or recruiters, using threats, physical violence; and 3) involuntariness, including the worker not giving free and informed consent to start the job or the ability to withdraw their consent and leave at any time. The ILO relies on a set of 11 indicators as warning signs to identify forced labor victims, including: abuse of vulnerability, deception, restriction of movement, isolation, physical and sexual violence, intimidation and threats, retention of identity documents, withholding of wages, debt bondage, abusive working and living conditions, and excessive overtime. They provide the basis to assess whether or not a worker is a victim of this crime or not, and points to the need for further investigation to see if their condition meets the legal definition outlined above.
Forced labor remains a persistent problem today. The ILO’s most recent estimates indicate that 27.6 million people are in forced labor on any given day in 2021. It is widely distributed around the world, and no country is spared from forced labor. More than half (15.1 million, or 55 percent) are estimated to be in Asia and the Pacific. In relative terms, forced labor prevalence is estimated to be the highest in Arab States (5.3 per thousand). Forced labor remains widespread across sectors. Among workers in forced labor, 32 percent work in the services sector, 16 percent in domestic work, and 8 percent in construction. Many of the goods and services produced in these sectors are consumed domestically and non-tradeable. These cases of forced labor are therefore unlikely to be addressed through trade measures, whether it be tariffs or import bans. Additionally, despite its small size in relative terms, around 1.5 percent of forced labor worldwide is estimated to be taking place in the mining and quarrying sector, which has become a key geopolitical sector for the production of critical inputs used in semiconductors, batteries, AI infrastructure, and defense production. If anything, the accelerated demand for these raw materials has only fueled the demand for forced labor.
Tariffs will not address the root causes of forced labor, nor will import bans improve the lives and working conditions of exploited workers on the ground. While forced labor import bans block tainted goods and incentivize companies to look into their supply chains (since those bans threaten access to important export markets), they do not change the structural conditions that generate forced labor in global supply chains and often end up deteriorating the conditions under which exploited workers work. Experts have argued that forced labor is a predictable outcome of how global supply chains have been organized, where large brands and retailers pressure suppliers to deliver low prices, with ever-shorter lead times, and fast turnover to accommodate for fast-changing consumer demands, creating incentives for suppliers to suppress labor costs through coercive practices. This includes debt bondage, excessive overtime, wage withholding, and restrictions on worker mobility. Detaining shipments under Withhold Release Orders (WROs) will not address these structural issues, and may put workers at greater risk when their factories abruptly shut down production. They are likely to generate job losses and may encourage firms to relocate production rather than improve conditions.
Forced labor related import bans around the world differ procedurally, but they all have the same goal: prohibit goods produced wholly or partly with forced labor throughout the supply chain. In the US, CBP can issue a WRO following reasonable suspicion before completing a full investigation. But the bar for a WRO to be put in action is said to be at a low evidentiary threshold in comparison with other countries, and often relies on investigative work from civil society organizations or journalists.
So what would be a better approach to tackle forced labor in global supply chains? Enforcement can take different but complementary approaches. On the one hand, experts suggest top-down enforcement that targets the most powerful firms in the supply chain, including multinational brands and retailers, as well as major first-tier suppliers who have substantial market power. CBP could strategically investigate firms whose purchasing practices drive exploitation across an entire sector. By changing the incentives of dominant firms, there could be cascading effects throughout the supply chain and on competitors. The US government could therefore play a major role in rewriting the rules of global supply chain governance.
On the other hand, experts argue that bottom-up worker power is necessary to build freedom of association, collective bargaining, and worker organization, which are so-called “enabling rights” through which labor rights are secured. Here, the US government would play a less direct role but could support local governments and civil society organizations in ensuring that vulnerable workers have a voice.
Finally, some solutions vary by sector and types of workers. Adult migrants are particularly vulnerable to the worst forms of labor exploitation (three times more likely than nonmigrant adult workers) due to a variety of factors. Language and cultural barriers may put them at risk of abuse, as well as the lack of access to social security and basic services. Tied visas also often lead to limited alternatives for migrant workers. Other workers may work illegally or in the informal sector, which deprives them of effective legal protection. But the Trump administration’s mass-deportation agenda and restrictions on migrant protections are difficult to reconcile with an effective strategy for enacting pro-migrant policies to reduce their risk of forced labor, in the US or abroad. Additionally, in the mining industry, which is playing an increasingly important geopolitical role, the formalization of informal mines has shown promising results in addressing human rights abuses, including forced labor.
Tariffs and US manufacturing revival
The tariffs, if they are not removed by some new court action, are also misguided because they are not likely to accomplish the domestic goal of reindustrializing the US economy that the Trump administration stated in its announcement of the 301 action. Historically, tariffs have helped developing countries to industrialize by promoting “infant industries,” including the US in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Brazil and Argentina in the 1950s and Japan and Korea in the 1960s and 1970s. But tariffs have never promoted reindustrialization in an already industrialized country. Reindustrialization requires a much broader investment effort—including by the government—in new capacity, skills, and technology. Attracting foreign investment, which can also help industrial growth, requires a stability in policy that is the opposite of the administration’s volatile policy stance on trade. Using trade as retaliation for non-trade behavior in foreign countries (as the US has done with Brazil, Canada, and the EU) only heightens uncertainty and deters foreign investment in the US.
A possible explanation for Trump’s persistent support for tariffs is to raise funds that are not under the control of Congress. Like the revenues under the control of the US that are being raised from the sale of Venezuelan oil following the illegal invasion of Venezuela, the tariff dollars were also to be used in an extra-constitutional manner. At various times, Trump promised to return the tariff dollars collected in the form of a “dividend” to US households, to replace the US income tax, and to pay down the US government debt. Congress had never authorized any of these. Since the tariffs were eventually ruled unlawful, the administration has returned just over half of the $166 billion collected under the IEEPA action that was ruled illegal.
The problem with cynical, ineffective measures is that they are costly, and they can deflect attention from real problems. Poorly designed policies and their enforcement mechanisms can unintentionally harm workers if factories close without meaningful remediation or worker involvement. If the US administration wanted to eliminate forced labor globally or to revive American manufacturing, it would enact policies that address the root causes of these issues.
